Cox Communications v. Sony Music

The Scope of Contributory Liability for Copyright Infringement

Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, 607 U.S. __ (2026)

I didn’t list contributory liability for infringement as one of the enduring non-AI issues in copyright law, but this year’s decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment is a reminder that issues thought to have been resolved years ago can resurface at any time.

Factual Background

Cox Communications, Inc. is an internet service provider selling internet, telephone, and cable television connections to millions of people. Some of its customers used this service to set up peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent to distribute copyrighted music without the permission of copyright owners. Sony Music Entertainment and other record companies owned the copyrights in some of these songs. Through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it hired a company to monitor illegal file sharing and notify internet service providers when it detected infringement. The company sent Cox Communications 163,148 notices of infringement during a two-year period. Cox Communications warned or suspended customers who were repeat infringers, but rarely terminated service for copyright infringement.

Sony and others sued Cox Communications for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. They claimed that Cox Communications failed to take adequate measures to stop infringement, thereby inducing or materially contributing to its customers’ infringement of music copyrights.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied Cox Communications safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and allowed the case to proceed to trial on theories of vicarious and contributory copyright infringement. The jury found Cox Communications liable on both counts and awarded $1 billion in statutory damages.

The Court of Appeals reversed the vicarious liability verdict, but affirmed the finding of willful contributory infringement. It vacated the damages award and remanded the case for a new trial on damages.

The case ultimately made its way to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion. Justice Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion.

front view of the Library of Congress building

Legal Background

Direct and Indirect Infringement

A copyright owner has the exclusive right to copy, distribute, display, perform, and make derivative works based on the copyrighted work. The exclusive right to perform a work includes the exclusive right to digitally transmit it. Anyone who exercises one of these exclusive rights without the owner’s consent is an infringer. Statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work may be awarded if infringement is willful. 17 U.S.C. § 504 (c)(2).

A person who actually performs the acts of unlawful reproduction, distribution, performance, etc. is guilty of direct infringement. A person who did not actually perform the infringing act but is responsible in some way for furthering it may be guilty of indirect infringement.   

Using an internet service to which you subscribe to reproduce, distribute and transmit copies of musical works without the copyright owners’ permission is an example of direct infringement. Providing a service or facility that customers use to do that is a potential source of contributory liability for infringement, but only under certain conditions.

In this case, Sony sought to hold Cox Communications liable for indirect infringement.

Vicarious and Contributory Liability

Courts recognize two kinds of indirect infringement: vicarious and contributory.

Vicarious liability

Vicarious liability may be imposed when one person has the right and ability to control, supervise and stop another person’s activity. Because employers have this power over their employees, they are often held vicariously liable for their employees’ acts within the course and scope of the employment.

Vicarious liability for infringement requires a showing of direct financial benefit from the infringing activity to the person with supervisory control. The lower courts rejected Sony’s claim of vicarious infringement liability because the financial benefit Cox received from its customers took the form of monthly internet subscription fees. It was not directly tied to infringing activity. Subscribers paid for lawful internet access, not for the ability to infringe copyrights. Cox Communications did not profit specifically or directly from the piracy occurring in the networks its customers set up.

The only issue to reach the United States Supreme Court in this case, therefore, was whether Cox Communications could be held contributorily liable for the infringing acts of its customers.

Contributory liability

Contributory liability may be imposed when a person either induces or materially contributes to another person’s wrongful act.

Material Contribution

The common law basis for contributory liability was “material contribution.” A person could be found to have materially contributed to an activity if s/he provided the site and facilities for infringement. No proof of inducement was necessary. Napster, for example, was found to have materially contributed to users’ acts of infringement because it maintained a centralized service with a searchable index of music files for users to download.

Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios raised the question whether a company that provides products that enable copyright infringement is always contributorily liable for “materially contributing” to users’ acts of direct infringement.

The case involved video recording products, i.e., equipment that people can use to record television programs. The Supreme Court held that recording free, over-the-air broadcasts to watch at a more convenient time is fair use, so long as the recording is made for the viewer’s own personal, noncommercial use. The Court then held that a company is not contributorily liable for infringement merely because it provides a service or product that customers can use to infringe copyrights, provided the product or service has substantial non-infringing uses. Because recording a television program for later viewing is a substantial, non-infringing use, and there was no evidence that Sony said or did anything to encourage customers to make infringing uses of its products, the Court held the company could not be held contributorily liable for infringing acts on the part of the buyers of its products. The short answer, then, is no. Merely providing a product or service that can be used to infringe copyrights will not necessarily result in contributory liability for infringement, provided it has substantial, non-infringing uses.

Inducement

The Court limited the scope of this holding (sometimes called the “Betamax safe harbor”) in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. In this case, the Court held that a company does not get the benefit of the Betamax safe harbor for a product or service that has substantial, non-infringing uses if it actively induces infringing uses.

In Grokster, the Court relied on marketing, communications and operational evidence that Grokster had deployed promotional materials and meta-tags designed to capture internet searches for “Napster.” Napster was a file-sharing network that had been shut down after a court ordered it to block users from sharing copyrighted materials. (Napster has since been rebranded as a provider of generative and agentic AI services.) It also distributed newsletters to users touting the availability of copyrighted music and movies to download on its networks. Customer support instructed users on how to locate, download and play copyrighted files.

Even if a product or service has substantial, non-infringing uses, then, contributory liability may arise  if a company actively induces infringing uses by soliciting and encouraging infringers to use it and helping customers use it to infringe copyrights.

The Issue in Cox Communications v. Sony

Two rules can be distilled from pre-2026 contributory infringement cases:

1) Furnishing a product or service may result in “material contribution” liability if its primary use is to infringe copyrights.

2) Furnishing a product or service that has substantial, non-infringing uses will not result in contributory liability unless the provider actively induces infringing uses.

The question raised in Cox Communications v. Sony Music was whether failing to stop known infringing uses is also a basis for imposing contributory liability, when the product or service has substantial, non-infringing uses.

The holding in Cox Communications v. Sony Music

The Supreme Court unanimously held that an internet service provider’s failure to stop known infringing uses of its service is not a basis for imposing contributory liability for the infringing uses that customers make of its service. An ISP’s failure to stop known infringement neither induces users’ infringement nor provides an independent, third basis for contributory liability.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) immunizes ISPs from contributory liability for user-provided content if they have implemented “a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders” who are repeat infringers. 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(1)A).

Sony basically argued that this immunity would be unnecessary if ISPs are not liable for providing services to known infringers anyway. Why try to incentivize ISPs to terminate known infringers’ accounts if they are not at risk of liability even in the absence of the DMCA?

The DMCA, however, does not expressly impose liability for providing internet service to known infringers. Another DMCA provision says that failure to comply with the DMCA’s safe harbor conditions “shall not bear adversely upon . . . a defense by the service provider . . . that the service provider’s conduct is not infringing.” 17 U.S.C. § 512(l).

To put it more colloquially, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions are meant to be a shield, not a sword.

Intent

Although intent has never been an essential element of a copyright infringement claim, Justice Thomas interpreted the Court’s precedents as imposing an intent requirement in contributory infringement claims:

“The provider of a service is contributorily liable for the user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement. The intent required for contributory liability can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement.”

Cox Communications v. Sony Music, at 7.

Justice Sotomayor’s Concurrence

Justice Sotomayor agreed that an ISP cannot be held contributorily liable for copyright infringement unless intent is established. She filed a concurring opinion, however, to dispute that inducement and tailoring a product to infringing uses are the only two situations that may support a finding of intent. She would have held the door open for other ways of establishing intent under common law “aiding and abetting” theory.

She also criticized the majority’s interpretation of the DMCA:

“The majority’s decision thus permits ISPs to sell an internet connection to every single infringer who wants one without fear of liability and without lifting a finger to prevent infringement. It also means that Cox is free to abandon its current policy of responding to copyright infringement. [U]nder the rule the majority adopts today, the safe harbor provision will not “d[o] anything at all” going forward. . . . Congress did not enact the safe harbor just so that this Court could eviscerate it.”

Cox Communications v. Sony Music (J. Sotomayor, concurring opinion) (citations omitted) at 6–7.

Nevertheless, because she did not believe the requisite showing of intent had been made in this case, she concurred in the judgment.

Limitations

 Cox Communications v. Sony Music only applies to internet service providers, what the common law described as “conduits.” It does not directly apply to people who copy, distribute or host infringing material.

Also, the Court noted that an ISP normally does not actually have knowledge of the identity of the user who is committing direct infringement. It has records of IP addresses associated with accounts, but a single IP address might be used by multiple people, not all of whom are infringers. It is possible that in a different case, where the defendant actually does know the identity of the specific direct infringer, the requisite finding of intent might be easier to make. Future cases will need to flesh that out.

Implications

As Congress and courts grapple with emerging generative AI copyright issues, it is likely that attempts will be made to apply the principles announced in Cox Communications v. Sony Music to generative AI architecture. While the internet is a neutral data conduit, large language models that drive generative-AI function by ingesting massive datasets of protected works to optimize their commercial output. Rights holders argue that building a system dependent on unauthorized ingestion constitutes direct or secondary infringement. However, the intent requirement articulated in Cox provides AI developers with a potentially expansive defense to output infringement. If providing a tool with the simple knowledge that users may generate infringing outputs is legally insufficient, then the battleground over generative AI must shift. Because generative AI tools arguably have substantial, non-infringing uses, litigators will need to prove intent to induce infringement to prevail on a contributory output infringement claim. The potential impact on input infringement claims, of course, is a different matter.

We are already seeing this defense framework reshape federal dockets. In June 2026, tech platforms seized upon the Cox precedent to try to stop copyright claims at the pleadings stage. In a motion filed in Tennessee federal court, X Corp. invoked Cox v. Sony Music to argue that music publishers’ secondary liability claims must be dismissed, asserting that the plaintiffs failed to allege explicit “affirmative inducement” rather than general platform piracy.

Practical Tip

Despite the Court’s ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony Music, platform providers may find it prudent to continue to comply with DMCA safe harbor requirements. Not only could this help them qualify for the immunities the DMCA provides, but it might also help demonstrate a lack of infringing intent.

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Top IP Cases

2023 was a big year for U.S. intellectual property law. Major developments occurred in every area. Here are the highlights

2023 was a big year for U.S. intellectual property law. Major developments occurred in every area. Here are the highlights.

Copyright

Fair Use

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith

This was one of the top copyright cases of 2022. It was a case that was pushing the limits of the  transformative fair use of photographs. The Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case in May. The decision is significant because it finally reined in the “transformative use” doctrine that the Court first announced in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music back in 1994. In that case, 2 Live Crew had copied key parts of the Roy Orbison song, “Oh, Pretty Women” to make a parody of the song in its own rap style. The Court held that the 2 Live Crew version, although reproducing portions of both the original song and the original recording of it without permission, transformed it into something else. Therefore, even though it infringed the copyright, the 2 Live Crew version was for a transformative purpose and therefore protected as fair use.

In the thirty years since Campbell, lower courts have been applying the “transformative use” principle announced in Campbell in diverse and divergent ways. Some interpretations severely eviscerated the copyright owner’s exclusive right to make derivative works. Their interpretations often conflicted. What one circuit called transformative “fair use” another circuit called actionable infringement. Hence the need for Supreme Court intervention.

In 1984, Vanity Fair licensed one of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s photographs of Prince to illustrate a magazine article about him. Per the agreement, Andy Warhol made a silkscreen using the photograph for the magazine and Vanity Fair credited the original photograph to Goldsmith. Unknown to her, however, Warhol proceeded to make 15 additional works based on Goldsmith’s photograph withour her permission.. In 2016, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts licensed one of them to Condé Nast as an illustration for one of their magazines. The Foundation received a cool $10,000 for it, with neither payment nor credit given to Goldsmith. The Foundation then filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that its use of the photograph was a protected fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. The district court granted declaratory judgment in favor of the Foundation. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that the four-factor “fair use” analysis favored Goldsmith. The Supreme Court sided with the Court of Appeals.

Noting that it was not ruling on whether Warhol’s making of works using the photograph was fair use, the Court limited its analysis to the narrow question whether the Foundation’s licensing of the Warhol work to Condé Nast was fair use. On that point, the Court determined that the use of the photograph to illustrate a story about Prince was identical to the use Goldsmith had made of the photograph (i.e., to illustrate a magazine article about Prince.) Unlike 2 Live Crew’s use of “Oh, Pretty Woman,” the purpose of the use in this case was not to mock or parody the original work.

The case is significant for vindicating the Copyright Act’s promise to copyright owners of an exclusive right to make derivative works. While Warhol put his own artistic spin on the photograph – and that might have been sufficient to sustain a fair use defense if he had been the one being sued – the Warhol Foundation’s and Condé Nast’s purpose was no different from Goldsmith’s, i.e., as an illustration for an article about Prince. Differences in the purpose or character of a use, the Court held, “must be evaluated in the context of the specific use at issue.” Had the Warhol Foundation been sued for displaying Warhol’s modifications of the photograph for purposes of social commentary in its own gallery, the result might have been different.

Although the holding is a seemingly narrow one, the Court did take the opportunity to disapprove the lower court practice of ending a fair use inquiry at the moment an infringer asserted that an unauthorized copy or derivative work was created for a purpose different from the original author’s.

Statute of Limitations and Damages

Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review this Eleventh Circuit decision. At issue was whether a copyright plaintiff may recover damages for infringement that occurred outside of the limitations period, that is, infringement occurring more than three years before a lawsuit was filed.

The circuits were split on this question. According to the Second Circuit, damages are recoverable only for acts of infringement that occurred during the 3-year period preceding the filing of the complaint. The Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, on the other hand, had held that as long as the lawsuit is timely filed, damages may be awarded for infringement that occurred more than three years prior to the filing, at least when the discovery rule has been invoked to allow a later filing. In Nealy, the Eleventh Circuit held that damages may be recovered for infringement occurring more than three years before the claim is filed if the plaintiff did not discover the infringement until some time after it first began.

The United States Supreme Court has resolved the Circuit split. Read about the Supreme Court’s decision in Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy.

Artificial Intelligence

Copyrightability

Thaler v. Perlmutter

This was an APA proceeding initiated in the federal district court of the District of Columbia for review of the United State Copyright Office’s refusal to register a copyright in an AI-generated work. In August, 2023, the district court upheld the Copyright Office’s decision that an AI-generated work is not protected by copyright, asserting that “human creativity is the sine qua non at the core of copyrightability….” For purposes of the Copyright Act, only human beings can be “authors.” Machines, non-human animals, spirits and natural forces do not get copyright protection for their creations.

Thaler appealed. Read more about what happened in Last Exit from Paradise.

Infringement

Many cases that are pending allege that using copyrighted works to train AI, or creating derivative works using AI, infringes the copyrights in the works so used. Most of these cases make additional claims as well, such as claims of unfair competition, trademark infringement, or violations of publicity and DMCA rights.

 I have been blogging about these cases for some time and periodically provide updates on them.

Trademark

Parody Goods

Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products

For more information about this case, read Balancing the First Amendment on Whiskey and Dog Toys.

This is the “parody goods” case. VIP Products used the “Bad Spaniels” name to market its dog toys, which were patterned on the distinctive shape of a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle. VIP filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that its product did not infringe the Jack Daniel’s brand. Jack Daniel’s counterclaimed for trademark infringement and dilution. Regarding infringement, VIP claimed First Amendment protection. Regarding dilution, VIP claimed the use was a parody of a famous mark and therefore qualified for protection as trademark fair use. The district court granted summary judgment to VIP.

The Supreme Court reversed. The Court held that when an alleged infringer uses the trademark of another (or something confusingly similar to it) as a designation of source for the infringer’s own goods, it is a commercial, not an expressive, use. Accordingly, the First Amendment is not a consideration in such cases.

Rogers v. Grimaldi had held that when the title of a creative work (in that case, a film) makes reference to a trademark for an artistic or expressive purposes (in that case, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), the First Amendment shields the creator from trademark liability. In the Jack Daniel’s case, the Court distinguished Rogers, holding that it does not insulate the use of trademarks as trademarks (i.e. as indicators of the source or origin of a product or service) from ordinary trademark scrutiny. Even though the dog toys may have had an expressive purpose, VIP admitted it used Bad Spaniels as a source identifier. Therefore, the First Amendment does not apply.

The Court held that the same rule applies to dilution claims. The First Amendment does not shield parody goods from a dilution claim when the alleged diluter uses a mark (or something confusingly similar to it) as a designation of source for its own products or services.

International Law

Abitron Austria v. Hetronic International

Here, the Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act does not have extraterritorial reach. Specifically, the Court held that Sections 1114(1)(a) and 1125 (a)(1) extend only to those claims where the infringing use in commerce occurs in the United States. They do not extend to infringement occurring solely outside of the United States, even if consumer confusion occurs in the United States.

The decision is a reminder to trademark owners that if they want to protect their trademark rights in other countries, they should take steps to protect their rights in those countries, such as by registering their trademarks there.

Patents

Patents are beyond the scope of this blog. Even so, a couple of developments are worth noting.

Enablement

Amgen v. Sonofi

In this case, the Supreme Court considered the validity of certain patents on antibodies used to lower cholesterol under the Patent Act’s enablement requirement (35 U.S.C. sec. 112(a)).  At issue was whether Amgen could patent an entire genus of antibodies without disclosing sufficient information to enable a person skilled in the art to create the potentially millions of antibodies in it. The Court basically said no.

If a patent claims an entire class of processes, machines, manufactures, or compositions of matter, the patent’s specification must enable a person skilled in the art to make and use the entire class. In other words, the specification must enable the full scope of the invention as defined by its claims.

Amgen v. Sanofi, 598 U.S. ____ (2023)

Conclusion

My vote for the most the significant IP decision in recent times is Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. Lower courts had all but allowed the transformative use defense to swallow up the exclusive right of a copyright owner to create derivative works. The Supreme Court provided much-needed correction. I predict that going forward, the most significant decisions will also be in the copyright realm, but they will have to do with AI.

Visit my extensive Copyright FAQs page.

Generative-AI: The Top 12 Lawsuits

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is generating more than content; it is generating lawsuits. Here is a brief chronology of what I believe are the most significant lawsuits that have been filed so far.

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is generating more than content; it is generating lawsuits. Here is a brief chronology of what I believe are some of the most significant lawsuits that have been filed so far.

Prompt asking ChatGPT to write a blog post in style of Thomas B James

Most of these allege copyright infringement, but some make additional or other kinds of claims, such as trademark, privacy or publicity right violations, defamation, unfair competition, and breach of contract, among others. So far, the suits primarily target the developers and purveyors of generative AI chatbots and similar technology. They focus more on what I call “input infringement” than on “output infringement.” That is to say, they allege that copyright infringement is involved in the way particular AI tools are trained.

Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH et al. v. ROSS Intelligence, Inc.

Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH et al. v. ROSS Intelligence Inc., No. 20-cv-613 (D. Del. 2020)

Thomson Reuters alleges that ROSS Intelligence copied its Westlaw database without permission and used it to train a competing AI-driven legal research platform. In defense, ROSS has asserted that it only copied ideas and facts from the Westlaw database of legal research materials. (Facts and ideas are not protected by copyright.) ROSS also argues that its use of content in the Westlaw database is fair use.

One difference between this case and subsequent generative-AI copyright infringement cases is that the defendant in this case is alleged to have induced a third party with a Westlaw license to obtain allegedly proprietary content for the defendant after the defendant had been denied a license of its own. Other cases involve generative AI technologies that operate by scraping publicly available content.

Update: The court has now issued a fair use decision in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence. After reviewing the headnotes and comparing them with the database materials, Judge Bilbas concluded that 2,243 headnotes were sufficiently creative and original to receive copyright protection, that Ross infringed them, and that “fair use” was not a defense in this instance because the purpose of the use was commercial and it competed in the same market. This decision might have limited value as a precedent, since it involved non-generative AI. Generative AI tools may be distinguishable in the fair use analysis. The district court approved Ross’s motion for interlocutory appeal. The case is under review by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Doe 1 et al. v. GitHub, Inc. et al.

Doe 1 et al. v. GitHub, Inc. et al., No. 22-cv-06823 (N.D. Calif. November 3, 2022)

This is a class action lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI that was filed in November, 2022. It involves GitHub’s CoPilot, an AI-powered tool that suggests lines of programming code based on what a programmer has written. The complaint alleges that Copilot copies code from publicly available software repositories without complying with the terms of applicable open-source licenses. The complaint also alleges removal of copyright management information in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1202, unfair competition, and other tort claims.

Updates: The court dismissed most of the plaintiffs’ claims, but allowed them to proceed with claims for breach of open-source licenses and granted leave to amend the DMCA claims in the complaint.

Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. The court, however, dismissed the DMCA claim, reasoning that the statute imposes an “identicality” standard (i.e., the AI’s output must be an exact, literal copy of the plaintiff’s work). Because plaintiffs alleged that Copilot’s outputs often generate modified versions of their original code rather than strict identical copies, the court dismissed the claim.

Judge Tigar certified the question whether identicality is required for interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Andersen et al. v. Stability AI et al.

Andersen et al. v. Stability AI et al., No. 23-cv-00201 (N.D. Calif. Jan. 13, 2023)

  • Update: As noted in my first update on Anderson v. Stability, Judge Orrick dismissed all claims except for Andersen’s direct infringement claim against Stability. Most of the dismissals, however, were granted with leave to amend.
Library of Congress housing the U.S. Copyright oFfice

Trial is scheduled for 2027.

Getty Images v. Stability AI

Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, having secured proper copyright registrations for the underlying art. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss it. The court denied the motion. The ruling on the motion suggests that copied images scraped into the training datasets can constitute direct infringement, and that AI models may inherently constitute a continuous, new form of infringing materials. The court also allowed the artists’ claims regarding false endorsement and trade-dress infringement to proceed. These claims address AI tools mimicking an artist’s name and style.

Getty Images v. Stability AI, No. 23-cv-00135-UNA (D. Del. February 23, 2023)

Getty Images has filed two lawsuits against Stability AI, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States, each alleging both input and output copyright infringement. Getty Images owns the rights to millions of images. It is in the business of licensing rights to use copies of the images to others. The lawsuit also accuses Stability AI of falsifying, removing or altering copyright management information, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices.

Stability AI has moved to dismiss the complaint filed in the U.S. for lack of jurisdiction.

Updates: Getty voluntarily dismissed the Delaware case and refiled the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Getty Images v. Stability AI, No. 3:25-cv-06891 (N.D. Calif. 2025).

In 2026, Judge Thompson dismissed the DMCA claim, but allowed claims for direct copyright infringement, trademark violation, and unfair competition to proceed.

Getty Images dropped the input-infringement copyright claim that it had filed in the U.K., primarily because it could not definitively prove where the model was trained (i.e., whether it was inside or outside the UK).

The UK court rejected Getty Images’s argument that the Stable Diffusion software itself was an “infringing copy” of an article imported into the UK. The court ruled that AI model weights are not copies; they are abstract statistical parameters that do not store or reproduce actual images.

Getty Images prevailed on trademark claims in the U.K., however.

Flora et al. v. Prisma Labs, Inc.

Flora et al. v. Prisma Labs, Inc., No. 23-cv-00680 (N.D. Calif. February 15, 2023)

Jack Flora and others filed a class action lawsuit against Prisma Labs for invasion of privacy. The complaint alleges, among other things, that the defendant’s Lensa app generates sexualized images from images of fully-clothed people, and that the company failed to notify users about the biometric data it collects and how it will be stored and/or destroyed, in violation of Illinois’s data privacy laws.

Update: The court granted a motion to compel arbitration.

Young v. NeoCortext, Inc.

Young v. NeoCortext, Inc., 2023-cv-02496 (C.D. Calif. April 3, 2023)

This is a publicity rights case. NeoCortext’s Reface app allows users to paste images of their own faces over those of celebrities in photographs and videos. Kyland Young, a former cast member of the Big Brother reality television show, has sued NeoCortext for allegedly violating his publicity rights. The complaint alleges that NeoCortext has “commercially exploit[ed] his and thousands of other actors, musicians, athletes, celebrities, and other well-known individuals’ names, voices, photographs, or likenesses to sell paid subscriptions to its smartphone application, Reface, without their permission.”

NeoCortext has asserted a First Amendment defense, among others.

Update: U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu denied NeoCortext’s motion to dismiss. Judge Hsu ruled that Young’s right of publicity claim was not preempted by the Copyright Act because he was seeking to vindicate the misuse of his personal likeness, not just the distribution of copyrighted images. The app’s face-swapping capabilities did not qualify as a “transformative use” defense as a matter of law at the dismissal stage.

Walters v. OpenAI, LLC

Walters v. OpenAI, LLC, No. 2023-cv-03122 (N.D. Ga. July 14, 2023) (Complaint originally filed in Gwinnett County, Georgia Superior Court on June 5, 2023; subsequently removed to federal court)

This is a defamation action against OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT. The lawsuit was brought by Mark Walters. He alleges that ChatGPT provided false and defamatory misinformation about him to journalist Fred Riehl in connection with a federal civil rights lawsuit against Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and members of his staff. ChatGPT allegedly stated that the lawsuit was one for fraud and embezzlement on the part of Mr. Walters. The complaint alleges that Mr. Walters was “neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in the lawsuit,” and “every statement of fact” pertaining to him in the summary of the federal lawsuit that ChatGPT prepared is false. A New York court recently addressed the questions of sanctions for attorneys who submit briefs containing citations to non-existent “precedents” that were entirely made up by ChatGPT. This is the first case to address tort liability for ChatGPT’s notorious creation of “hallucinatory facts.”

In July, 2023, Jeffery Battle filed a complaint against Microsoft in Maryland alleging that he, too, has been defamed as a result of AI-generated “hallucinatory facts.” Battle v. Microsoft.

Update on Walters v. OpenAI, LLC: In 2025, the court granted summary judgment in favor of OpenAI, on three grounds:

  • No Factual Statement: The court ruled that a reasonable reader would not interpret the ChatGPT output as stating actual facts. This was heavily influenced by the AI’s internal disclaimers, its warning to the user that it lacked access to the referenced document, and the user’s own admission that he quickly verified the claim was false.
  • No Fault or Malice: To win a defamation claim as a public figure, Walters needed to prove OpenAI acted with negligent disregard for truth or “actual malice.” The court found he failed to provide evidence of either. OpenAI successfully argued that it leads the AI industry in reducing such “hallucinations” through training and human feedback.
  • Lack of Damages: The court noted Walters did not suffer provable damages or ask OpenAI for a retraction before filing, making him ineligible to recover the punitive or presumed damages he sought.

P.M. et al. v. OpenAI LP et al.

P.M. et al. v. OpenAI LP et al., No. 2023-cv-03199 (N.D. Calif. June 28, 2023)

This lawsuit has been brought by underage individuals against OpenAI and Microsoft. The complaint alleges the defendants’ generative-AI products ChatGPT, Dall-E and Vall-E collect private and personally identifiable information from children without their knowledge or informed consent. The complaint sets out claims for alleged violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; California’s Invasion of Privacy Act and unfair competition law; Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, and Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act; New York General Business Law § 349 (deceptive trade practices); and negligence, invasion of privacy, conversion, unjust enrichment, and breach of duty to warn.

Update: Plaintiffs filed a voluntary dismissal.

Tremblay v. OpenAI, Inc.

Tremblay v. OpenAI, Inc., No. 23-cv-03223 (N.D. Calif. June 28, 2023)

Another copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI relating to its ChatGPT tool. In this one, authors allege that ChatGPT is trained on the text of books they and other proposed class members authored, and facilitates output copyright infringement. The complaint sets forth claims of copyright infringement, DMCA violations, and unfair competition.

Updates: The court dismissed claims of vicarious copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations, negligence, and unjust enrichment. Claims for direct copyright infringement of the input kind, and unfair trade practices, survived.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized dozens of AI copyright lawsuits against OpenAI into a single venue: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under Judge Sidney H. Stein. In Re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation. Tremblay is included in this consolidation.

Silverman et al. v. OpenAI

Silverman et al. v. OpenAI, No. 23-cv-03416 (N.D. Calif. July 7, 2023)

Sarah Silverman (comedian/actress/writer) and others allege that OpenAI, by using copyright-protected works without permission to train ChatGPT, committed direct and vicarious copyright infringement, violated section 17 U.S.C. 1202(b), and their rights under unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment law.

Updates: In February 2024, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a joint ruling covering both the Tremblay and Silverman motions to dismiss. The court dismissed claims of vicarious copyright infringement, negligence, and unjust enrichment, but allowed the input infringement claim to proceed. OpenAI did not contest that using the plaintiffs’ books to train its Large Language Models (LLMs) required a “fair use” determination

On June 25, 2025 Judge Chhabria issued a ruling on fair use. The court granted Meta’s motion for summary judgment on fair use with respect to AI training; reserved the motion for summary judgment on the DMCA claims for decision in a separate order, and held that the claim of infringing distribution via leeching or seeding “will remain a live issue in the case.”

The case has been consolidated into the broader Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) pending in the Southern District of New York.

Kadrey et al. v. Meta Platforms

Kadrey et al. v. Meta Platforms, No. 2023-cv-03417 (N.D. Calif. July 7, 2023)

The same general kinds of allegations as are made in Silverman v. OpenAI, but this time against Meta Platforms, Inc.

Update: There has been a ruling in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms.

J.L. et al. v. Alphabet Inc. et al.

J.L. et al. v. Alphabet Inc. et al. (N.D. Calif. July 11, 2023)

This is a lawsuit against Google and its owner Alphabet, Inc. for allegedly scraping and harvesting private and personal user information, copyright-protected works, and emails, without notice or consent. The complaint alleges claims for invasion of privacy, unfair competition, negligence, copyright infringement, and other causes of action.

Update: Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed defendants Alphabet Inc. and Google DeepMind. Google LLC remains the sole defendant, and the litigation—now tracked as In re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation—is proceeding.

On the regulatory front

The U.S. Copyright Office is examining the problems associated with registering copyrights in works that rely, in whole or in part, on artificial intelligence. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has suggested that generative-AI implicates “competition concerns.”. Lawmakers in the United States and the European Union are considering legislation to regulate AI in various ways.

Update on Copyright Office Reports: The Copyright Office has issued reports in three parts:

Part 1: Digital Replicas

Released on July 31, 2024, this initial part addresses the unauthorized use of AI to realistically replicate an individual’s voice or appearance (e.g., deepfakes and AI-generated music tracks mimicking famous artists). The Copyright Office recommends that Congress enact a new federal law to protect individuals from unauthorized digital replica distributions. See Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 1 -Digital Replicas.

Part 2: Copyrightability

This Report addresses whether and to what extent AI-generated output is protected by copyright. Key findings and conclusions:

  • Prompts are Insufficient: Text prompts generally function merely as instructions to convey unprotectable ideas. Because a user does not exercise ultimate creative control over how the AI generates the final material, prompts alone do not establish human authorship.
  • AI as a Creative Tool: If a human author maintains sufficient control over the expressive elements, the work can be protected. For example, if a creator inputs their own hand-drawn art and uses AI to refine it, the original perceptible human work remains copyrightable.
  • Modifications and Arrangements: Humans can claim copyright over the creative selection, coordination, arrangement, or expressive modification of AI-generated content. However, protection only applies to the human-contributed elements, not the AI-generated parts. The Copyright Office mandates transparency. Authors submitting registration applications have a duty to disclose and disclaim any AI-generated content within their applications that is more than minor (de minimis)
  • No New Laws Needed: The Office concluded that existing legal frameworks are flexible enough to evaluate AI cases on a case-by-case basis without need for new legislation.

See Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2 – Copyrightability.

Part 3. Generative-AI Training

This report deals with copyright issues associated with the use of copyrighted works in generative-AI training, especially input infringement.

  • Fair Use Limitations: Using commercial troves of copyrighted works to build models that directly compete with original authors likely stretches past fair use boundaries.
  • The Role of Licensing: The Office highlighted that voluntary licensing markets are already actively emerging across the music and news sectors.

See Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3 – Generative AI Training.

For more updates, see my full AI Lawsuits Roundup.”

For a wealth of information about copyright law, visit my extensive Copyright FAQs page.